


Demand a Heart from a Huntsman

by StripedSunhat



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Logic, I'm Sorry, Is a Pyrrhic victory still a victory?, Multi, Play it back, Tragedy, Why Sparks need therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 18:32:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15321660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripedSunhat/pseuds/StripedSunhat
Summary: Orders cannot be broken.It doesn't mean they must be followed.





	Demand a Heart from a Huntsman

_She called a huntsman, and said, "Take the child away into the forest; I will no longer have her in my sight. Kill her, and bring me back her heart as a token."_ – Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

 

 

 .

Gil wakes up. The shift is instant from sleep to awareness, exchanging the black of closed eyelids for the shadows of night. He reaches without thinking, fingers closing on cold metal.

In the grey darkness he can only just make out Agatha and Tarvek’s sleeping forms. He props himself up in the bed, watching the rise and fall of their chests as they breath.

The knife in his hand is heavy with the weight of orders.

 ..

Control is a funny thing.

Gil has spent more of his life without it than with it.

He knows the feeling by heart, is intimately familiar with the phantom pull of it slipping away. Of trying to keep a hold on it like smoke from your lungs – intangible and choking. Eventually there’s nothing. Not even air.

That’s when you die.

That’s when you’re lost.

Gil’s fingers twitch and tighten on the hilt. He knows this. Knows fighting for control with every speck of self. Except it’s never really fighting for control, not truly. It’s fighting for time.

He’s fighting now. And he knows that whatever he has left can be most accurately measured in minutes.

He reaches out a (straining, twitching) hand and brushes Agatha’s hair from her closed eyes. The effort hurts. It’s worth it.

 ...

He’s come to hate sleeping anywhere other than Castle Heterodyne. The Castle never sleeps, never falters. There’s no such thing as being truly alone in the Castle. The Castle could stop this. The Castle could put and end to everything before it got started.

As it is they’re aboard Castle Wulfenbach this week and all of the next. The empire is vast and sometimes their presence is needed to keep everything in line. Not everything can be handled from within Mechanicsburg’s walls.

 ....

Whenever he leaves – be it for a month, a week or even simply an hour – Gil will pull Agatha into his arms and tell her, “You are my heart.”

Every time Agatha will wind her arms around his neck say, “And you are mine. Always you. Only you.”

 .....

There are – gaps – in his history.

Voids.

Endlessly dark chasms from which monsters crawl in and roost.

Gil had tested Tarvek’s formula on Dupree. He hadn’t had a chance to test it on himself. Dupree knocked him out. Gil woke up and it was later.

Gil ended up trapped by his own father. His only option was his father’s deal. His father got to work. Gil blinked and it was later.

Gil had an empire to run. He didn’t have time for sleep or rest or sanity. He was not himself. Gil turned and it was later.

It was later.

It was later.

It was later.

So many places where the monsters could sneak in.

And Gil would never know.

......

The empire is always a breath away from grinding to a halt. It is their job to push it forward. Gil continues to do so as he always has. Except now his orders are carried by favor not force. His power is one of illusion and implication now. He has stripped away everything he has of substance.

He’ll end up taking too much with him as it is.

.......

There’s the temptation to pretend it isn’t true.

There’s no real way to know until it happens. And so, since it hasn’t happened it must not be true.

Gil knows that’s a lie.

He can feel it. In his bones. In his breath. In his soul.

She did not lie.

He might not know when, but he can still feel it, like sand in an hourglass. A ceaseless stream he cannot see. He has no idea how long he has; all he knows is the feeling of sand through his fingers, coarse and biting, as he tries to stop it falling.

........

Agatha and Tarvek are dumbstruck by his wedding gift.

Tarvek already has the crown, Agatha the grace. It only makes sense for Gil to give them the kingdom to go with them. Publicly Agatha and Tarvek graciously accept, the very picture of divine royalty. Privately Tarvek tells him that just because Gil is abdicating doesn’t mean he’s getting out of his share of running things while Agatha sorts through things to make sure as little as possible will actually change. The Wulfenbach Empire is no more and with its death comes the new Storm Kingdom, born of the union of Lady Agatha Heterodyne and King Tarvek Sturmvoraus.

.........

Gil doesn’t know how long he has.

That’s part of the fun, he supposes. Part of the appeal. At least for her. For Gil it’s a blessing wrapped in madness.

It could be decades.

(It could be days.)

He can feel the sand trickle through his fingers.

 ..........

Gil pulls Agatha close. “You are my heart.” This is all he has to offer.

This is all he can try.

“And you and Tarvek are mine.”

It’s all wrong.

“Don’t say that. Please don’t. Say that it’s only me that’s your heart. Just me and no one else. Please.” When she opens her mouth, a question on her lips and worry in her eyes, he pulls her closer still. “Please.”

This has to work.

It’s all he can try.

“You are my heart Gil. Always you. Only you.”

...........

He tries to tell them. Of course he does. It’s the first thing he does.

His words get caught in his throat and his jaw shuts hard enough to ache. His tongue catches on his teeth and his voice turns to a croak. He tries until he cannot breath. It does not work.

He tries to fix it. Of course he does. What else would he do?

His hands are not his own. They will not write, will not work. His mind his not his own. It will not plan, will not think. He tries until he collapses. It does not work.

He wages war, every day, every hour.

It is not ever seen.

Even the strain does not show.

 ............

He doesn’t know why his father put the copy in his head.

(He’ll never get to ask.)

He doesn’t know if it was on orders or his own idea. He doesn’t know if it was his father was trying to protect him, hoping orders wouldn’t work if Gil’s mind wasn’t Gil’s. If it was meant to subvert her orders, hoping that him being the puppet of her puppet would be good enough. He doesn’t know what his father’s goal was, only that it didn’t work.

But if there’s one thing it did do, it’s teach Gil how to work around when his will isn’t his own.

 .............

Information is a funny thing.

Lucrezia may be of one mind, but she’s of many bodies.

The one in Zola – the one who decimated everything she touched, who extended her poison control over all of Europa, the one who’s gone now – knew nothing of the secrets the one in Anevka had after they parted.

The one in Agatha’s head – the one they fought the hardest, who posed the sharpest threat, the one who’s gone now – knew nothing of the secrets the one in Anevka had after they parted.

The one in Anevka – the one who fled, the one ran and hid and _planned_ (always planned) – held the world in her secrets. And no one knew but her.

They track her down in a field. It is nowhere important and never will be. A fitting end for someone who would never wish for such a one.

She’s lying sideways in the mud, so damaged she can’t even level herself upright. Her frame’s off-balance and her fingers twitch sporadically and the gears in one arm won’t stop moving, grinding against each other, turning against nothing.

The only one with the skill to possibly fix her is Tarvek and he’ll sooner see the world burn to cinders.

She’s laughing, a disjointed, frenzied sound. They get closer and she laughs and laughs and laughs. The mechanical rasp of her body at odds with the harmonics of her stolen voice.

All she does is laugh.

Agatha and Tarvek leave to fetch what they need.

Gil stays behind to guard.

As soon as they leave her eyes, before glazed and gazing at the sky, focus on him.

“He actually did it,” she says. “Oh Klaus, how proud I am of you!”

“My father is dead,” Gil snaps. “Whatever you think he did for you, you’re wrong.”

“Oh but I’m not. He was mine you know. He didn’t like it, didn’t want it, but he was. Inside and out, everything he was. It was mine.” She laughs again, the sound just as erratic but no longer incoherent. “I gave your father such orders,” she crows. “I gave him orders to give _you_ orders too. Oh I knew I couldn’t have you. Not like I had him. But I could still leave you a surprise. A little gift, hiding somewhere in you, waiting. I didn’t know if he’d managed it or not but he did! I can’t tell you when my little gift will open. Even I don’t know. But one day, for one brief moment, you will be mine. And what fun we’ll have then.”

Her face is cracked and broken, her jaw unhinged. She smiles anyway, one side of her face high and sharp and the other gaping.

He’ll never forget the sight of her. Broken and victorious.

“Would you like to hear what they are? The orders you have lurking in your mind? Would you like to hear what you’ll do for me?” Her smile becomes even sharper. “You are going to kill her. You are going to cut out her heart. You are going to carve it from her chest and cut it to shreds until not even a hundred Sparks could fix it.”

Ice forms in Gil’s chest. The words do not settle into his body. Rather, he is suddenly aware that they have always been there.

“You’re going to take my daughter’s heart for me.”

Lucrezia begins to laugh again, louder and louder still. Her eyes glow brighter and brighter flickering wildly. Her laughter becomes deafening. Her eyes glow like perdition.

Then she stops.

All that is left is empty darkness and silence.

“Gil?” Gil looks up. Agatha and Tarvek have returned. “Did she say anything?"

He tries to scream.

“No. She just laughed.”

He loops one arm around Agatha’s waist and the other around Tarvek’s shoulders. His grip is loose and relaxed.

He cannot scream.

 .

In the moment between confidence and certainty there is fear. Gil stands in that moment, watching Agatha and Tarvek sleep, and he is afraid. If he is wrong then he will have lost and lost everything.

Then it passes and he has won.

Gil gets out of bed. He cannot make himself leave the room. (It is not his will keeping him there.)

He walks over to the desk and in the dark pulls a blank sheet of paper from it’s cluttered surface. He’s composed his explanation a thousand times in his head along with a hundred revisions in case he cannot make himself write it. ( _I love you_ is the first thing he writes. For as much as he will be able to put to ink this comes first. It always comes first.)

He kisses first one sleeping face then the other, careful not to wake them.

The knife in his hand is heavy with the weight of orders.

Agatha and Tarvek sleep on.

And Gil…

Gil is Agatha’s heart.

She’s said so herself.


End file.
